I have a question that may have been answered before, so please bear with me. It’s this: If I photograph an interesting organism, then find the same exact individual the very next day (or the next week) and photograph it again… is it frowned upon to re-post that individual? For example, if I have a spider that’s living outside my house that I see on a daily basis, is it preferred that I only post it one time, or is it okay to submit new observations of it periodically?
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personally i think periodical updates on an individual organism are interesting, but every day/every few days would be excessive (unless the spider is going through some changes in that time.
so i’d wait for the spider to molt and grow a lil bit before making another observation of it.
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Yep, you can post it again, no problem.
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It’s up to you! You should not put photos from different periods of time in the same observation, but if you wish to observe the same individual multiple times, that is perfectly fine.
It is useful in such cases if you link to previous observations in some way. You can copy the link in the notes or use an observation field such as “Same specimen over time” or “Similar observation set”.
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There’s no rule. If you see a reason to post repeated observations of the same subject, go ahead.
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I personally don’t post on the same individual more than once a week unless there’s a particular reason, as I think that’s a reasonable time frame. But you do what you think is best for that particular subject!
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I have several posts of the common house spiders with catches… sometimes a couple times a day depending on the spiders’ activity.
I have several posts of butterfly and dragonfly individuals that are in my garden day after day.
I find it interesting, which is one of the reasons iNat exists… to spark your interest!
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Some folks find it very interesting to follow serial observations of an individual if there is something to note: activity pattern, prey, different life stages, seasons etc or maybe a plant dying due to climate change over the years
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I’d go for separate observations. You could add a link to any previous observation of the same organism in the comments. Me too, I have an example of a multi-observation organism: a tree in my home town. I have already added 3 observations at different times of the year:
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/140073046
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/154664733
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/185036980
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Thank you, everyone, for your feedback! The flexibility to add observations in any way that you like is one of the great attractions of iNat.
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There are many trees that I try to record each year. Linking the observations is a good idea.
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